


before we all run out

by Jules1398



Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: ADHD, Angst, Break Up, Emotions, F/M, M/M, Rejection, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 03:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14728814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jules1398/pseuds/Jules1398
Summary: All Tommy did was run, but it was never fast enough.





	before we all run out

**Author's Note:**

> i just watched iw and vented all of my anger into angst but you should know goddamn i love tommy shepherd  
> [catch me on tumblr](http://crackandcanonships.tumblr.com/)

All Tommy did was run, but it was never fast enough. He felt trapped on a planet that hated him. All of his friends thought that he was emotionless. That he hated everything, but the truth was that Tommy loved so fucking much but he never received anything in return.

It all started the same way every tragic teenager’s story did: daddy issues. His parents divorced when he was young, and his father fucked off as soon as the papers went through. The only trace of him throughout the bulk of Tommy’s childhood was a check that came in the mail once a month. And then, when his father evidently lost his job, the checks stopped coming.

In all honesty, his mother wasn’t much better, but Tommy didn’t blame her for it like he blamed his dad. Once Frank Shepherd walked out of the house and their lives, most of his mom walked out with him, leaving an empty shell of a woman that wouldn’t work, but also wouldn’t seek help. Without her being very present, Tommy was effectively on his own at age seven.

He was desperate for attention and Tommy supposed that’s what turned him into a bad kid. Antagonizing his peers and his teachers turned all eyes to him. He was going to get noticed, whether they liked it or not. He went from detention center to detention center and made no effort to change. It wasn’t enough to put him in a cell for life. He could deal with adulthood when he got to it.

It was in one of these detention centers that Tommy met his first love: Lisa Molinari. She was a bad kid too, relying on stealing to get by. And, damn, was she stunning. He loved everything about her, from her overgrown brown bangs to her coffee colored eyes to her distaste for authority to her bitchy attitude.

She was an artist and Tommy was more than content with being her muse. He was so enamored with her, that he was unable to see that he was just another one of her brushes, a tool to suit her own needs. Not until she cheated on him.

“Lisa,” Tommy had said, tears stained on his face. “Who is he to you? I thought we had something.”

“He’s just another guy, Tommy,” she said with a shrug. She was frowning, but then again when had she ever smiled. 

“So, you don’t love him?” he asked, unsure if that made it better or worse.

“No, Tommy,” Lisa replied. “I don’t give a shit about him. He’s just another guy.”

“I thought I was special. Why would you do this to me?” he wondered. “I love you.”

Her frown deepened. “Sorry Tommy, but the truth is I never really loved you. You are special, I mean I’ve kept you around for this long, but I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?” he asked through the tears.

“There’s one part of you that I do love,” she informed him. “And it’s not your brain or your personality. The special part of you is what you can do with those six inches that are under your belt.”

“I thought you were my soulmate,” he admitted. Every second she looked at him with those unimpressed brown eyes, another piece was chipped away from his heart,

“I don’t have a soulmate. I have me and that’s it,” she replied. “You’d do good to give up on that too. People like us? We don’t get love.”

Lisa strutted away, leaving Tommy crying alone in the empty bathroom. Her words cut into him deeper than a knife, but he refused to fully believe her. There was still a sliver of hope left in him. Hope that he could be loved.

And then he lost that hope when he went and vaporized his school. It was an accident. Something had been off about him lately. And by off, he meant completely fucking different. He had always loved running, but now nobody could keep up. How could they when his feet moved faster than the speed of light? He had all this power and he had no idea where it came from, considering his painfully average parents.

With his ADHD, Tommy’s brain always moved a million miles a minute but now, with his newfound swiftness, it had been ramped up unbearably. They couldn’t afford medication, so he was forced to deal with it on his own and, well, he couldn’t. His knee bobbed up and down no matter how long he had to sit for and he just could not stop moving.

And, apparently, he was more powerful than he thought because one day he was bobbing his knee so fast that the entire building crumbled to ash, along with the desk he was seated in, which made it painfully obvious that he was the culprit.

His mom refused to look at him and SHIELD dragged him off to be in a special kind of lockdown. There was no court date in sight for a dangerous individual such as himself, just years upon years of government testing. They wanted to turn him into a weapon. There was a sliver of a person left when they started but, by the time the Young Avengers busted him out, he was long gone.

The Young Avengers saved him. Billy was his brother in a weird reincarnation sort of way and, for some reason, he cared for him in the most reluctant way possible. Tommy was starting to feel again, though he would never show it. Pushing people away was easier. If they never got close, they could never hurt him.

And, when Tommy started hooking up with Kate Bishop, he definitely didn’t intend for it to turn into something more for him. She was flawless to him, and probably not worthy of any of his flaws.

Her long black hair cascaded over her bare shoulder as he laid in bed with her one night after their world saving had turned into yet another hook up.

“You’re beautiful. Do you know that?” he asked in a low voice as he stared into her bright blue eyes, so full of the hope for a better world that Tommy desperately wished he had.

Kate smirked. “Yes, I do. You’re not so bad yourself, Shepherd. Not to mention how killer that pace of yours is in bed.”

Tommy chuckled. “Nothing but the best for you, Kate.”

She bit her lip.”I have a question for you.”

“Yes?” He secretly hoped that this was the moment. She would ask him if they could be something more and then maybe he could finally learn to love.

“Do you think Eli would ever take me back?” she asked.

Tommy frowned. “I don’t fucking know,” he replied harshly.

“Chill, it was just a question,” Kate said with a raise of her eyebrows.

“I don’t want to talk about him,” Tommy snapped. “Especially not when we’re in bed together.”

“I thought we were friends, Tommy,” she reasoned. “In and out of this bed.”

He turned away from her. “We are,” he mumbled. “I just hoped that we could be something more someday.”

“Oh, Tommy,” she said and he could hear the fucking pity in her voice. “I don’t feel that way about you. I’m so sorry.”

Tommy turned back around. “You broke my heart and all you can say to me is ‘sorry’?”

“I can’t help how I feel,” she replied. “We agreed before that this was casual. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Nobody ever does,” he sighed.

She set a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “We care about you, Tommy. Your friends care.”

He offered her a half-smile. “Can we just pretend that little conversation didn’t happen and continue on like before?”

“Sure we can,” Kate replied before leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to his lips.

He was going to get over her. After all, what did he need love for anyway? She was right. He always had the Young Avengers, which included his very own sort-of-twin.

Until he met his other mom and everything went to complete shit, destroying the team forever. He considered going to his new mother, but her preference for Billy was obvious from the get go. Tommy didn’t blame her. Billy was just so nice and he wasn’t.

Instead, Tommy ran. He went from place to place in an attempt to find himself a home. Eventually, he landed himself a dead-end job at some company, using his powers to assemble parts. It sucked and most of his coworkers were old and boring, but it paid for him to be able to start a life of his own.

That’s where he met David. They were the youngest guys in the company thus became instant friends. Well, maybe Tommy had to push just a little bit, but it worked.

And then some weird version of Patriot that wasn’t Eli appeared and Tommy disappeared. When he got back, he discovered that David had met a few members of his old team and the Young Avengers had risen again and saved the world.

It was a little bit hurtful that they hadn’t even bothered to text him when everything went to shit, but he sucked it up and went to the afterparty anyway. The party was fun and he flirted with Kate, but it was David that he ended up going home with

His two month relationship with David worked better than it ever had with Lisa or Kate, which might because it was an actual relationship, but it turned out that David was the only functional part of it. When it all went to shit, it was completely Tommy’s fault. His heart had settled down, but his body never stopped running. He quit his old job and dashed from place to place, using David to ground him, but eventually he had enough.

“We need to break up,” David announced one night after Tommy had arrived at two in the morning and woken him up by stumbling around when he got inside.

“What are you talking about? We’re doing great. I just had the best weekend in Berlin! I got you some Mezzo Mix. It’s in the fridge.” Tommy asked as he checked the expiration date on a can of ravioli in the pantry. Two days past couldn’t be  _ that bad, _ could it?

“No, Tommy. We aren’t doing great,” David replied. Tommy turned toward him. “Maybe you are, but the fact is, I never see you for more than an hour or two a week anymore.”

“You could come with me,” Tommy suggested. “I’m going to this party in Tokyo tomorrow and I just know the host would be happy to have you there.”

“I need someone who’s here for me,” David explained. “Not just emotionally, but physically too.”

Tommy furrowed his eyebrows. “But, David, we’re in love. I’m sure we can find a way.”

David sighed. “I’m sorry Tommy, but who could ever love a boy like you? You’re out of here as soon as you arrive, and that doesn’t provide the stability needed for a real relationship. I get that you’re adventurous but if you can’t stay in one place long enough to truly be with somebody, then you need to stick to hook ups.”

“But David-” Tommy began.

“No buts,” he interrupted. “I’m not going to let you break my heart anymore. I want you out of my apartment.”

Tommy frowned. “If that’s what you really want, I can go.”

There were tears in David’s eyes now. “It’s not what I want but, in the end, it’s what I need. You have to leave and you have to stop coming back.”

He nodded and dashed out the door. Tommy didn’t stop running until he was at a place where he could truly be alone. In a small deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Tommy stared up at the sky and screamed. He needed to escape everything, but he was trapped because he had nothing off of the Earth.

He debated going back to Billy’s, but he knew that his place was no good for him. He had stayed there for a short period of time a few years back, but Billy’s parents expected him to act like their son did and he knew that he could never be what they wanted, so that wasn’t his place.

Maybe Kate would take him in for a bit, but she was busy fighting crime with Clint Barton and he didn’t really want to be a burden in their busy superhero lifestyles.

The Tokyo thing was still happening the next day, so he chose to run laps around the planet until it started. Sure, it wasn’t going to get him anywhere, but maybe he could burn off some steam.

On his fourth lap, he saw a familiar man working on packing some sort of spacecraft and she stopped. The guy was taller and perhaps a bit more built and eventually Tommy was able to place him as a member of the more recent Young Avengers team and the dude that was making mopey heart eyes at Kate during the party. Tommy felt for the guy.

“You’re Noh-Varr, right?” he asked.

The man almost hit his head turning around to face him and, when he saw who it was, he scowled. “Hello, Thomas Shepherd. What could you possibly be doing here?”

“It’s Tommy,” he clarified. “And I was running around, trying to clear my head when I found you. I figured we sort of run in the same circles, so I might as well say hi.”

“Hi,” Noh-Varr responded, continuing to carelessly toss bags in the spaceship.

“What are you doing?” Tommy asked.

“Earth is boring,” he replied. “I need an adventure.”

“There are plenty of adventures to be had on Earth,” he pointed out. “They just might crush your heart into a million worthless pieces but, hey, that’s what life is all about.”

“If you think life is about heartbreak, then I am afraid that you’ve reached the same fate as I,” Noh-Varr sighed. “But my suffering is not limited to this terrible planet. I’m afraid Kate Bishop was only one of my many heartbreaks.”

“Join the club,” Tommy snorted. “She told me she wasn’t looking for a relationship, but I still fell for her.”

“Being in love with women is awful,” Noh-Varr said. “And men are just as bad. As well as anyone in between.”

“So you’re just leaving?” Tommy asked. “Trying to escape your past?”

“I’m trying to start anew,” he explained. “I want to explore the universe and there’s nothing for me here.”

Tommy hesitated for a moment but looked into the other man’s blue eyes, which contained more darkness than he had seen in that of any other hero before. 

“Do you have room for one more lost soul?” Tommy asked.

Noh-Varr looked into his ship and then back to Tommy. “Hop on, Thomas. We’ve got a lot of journeying to do.”


End file.
